A new Channel 4 drama-documentary, Dirty Business, tells the true story of two amateur sleuths who exposed the scale of sewage dumping in English and Welsh rivers. Starring David Thewlis and Jason Watkins, the programme follows retired police officer Ashley Smith and Oxford maths professor Peter Hammond as they investigate pollution in the River Windrush in the Cotswolds in 2016.
The pair uncover evidence of untreated sewage being discharged into waterways, a result of decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure since privatisation in 1989. Their findings reveal thousands of instances of rivers and seas contaminated with sewage. Real footage shot by campaigners is woven into the drama to illustrate the environmental damage.
A second storyline focuses on the Preen family, whose eight-year-old daughter Heather died from E. coli O157 poisoning in 1999 after stepping in contaminated water on a Devon beach. The cause of the outbreak was never officially identified, but the case highlights the human cost of water pollution.
The drama also targets the regulatory failures of the Environment Agency and the practice of 'operational self-monitoring', which shifted responsibility for detecting breaches from the regulator to the water companies themselves. It criticises the ineffectiveness of fines, the revolving door between regulators and companies, and high executive salaries.
Opening with footage of Margaret Thatcher in 1989 predicting the success of water privatisation, Dirty Business argues that handing water provision to profit-driven private companies has led to systemic failures. The programme aims to spark public outrage and potentially drive policy change, much like the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office did for the Horizon scandal.
